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evanesce-origin · 11 days ago

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apparitions (jayvik)

ao3 link

Warnings: Angst, no happy ending. Chronic longing and cunty Viktor

When night fell and crept into the wee hours of the morning it was a reunion.

When Jayce is exhausted and full of guilt, Viktor appears to him. An apparition or a man or something in between.

Jayce spent a lot of time waiting.

For a man of such action, it shouldn't have been true. In some ways, to those who did not truly know him, it wasn't. He also spent a lot of time doing. There were constant plans to go over with the Council, discussion of what was to be done about Zaun. Hextech was still something he clung to for better or for worse. But every morning he woke up, guilty and waiting.

Jayce waited for the day to pass him by, a flurry of productivity as he signed documents and drew up calculations he wasn't sure made sense to him anymore. The fall of dusk felt like bone-deep relief and anticipation wrapped up in a shredded ribbon. Something akin to threads of fate. Bloodstained and damaged.

When night fell and crept into the wee hours of the morning it was a reunion. The exhaustion crept into his veins and made him far too aware of the bags under his eyes. He fought to keep his attention on the pages in front of him. He failed. Jayce’s vision began to blur somewhere around 2 AM and he thought distantly that at some point he had been used to this work. Used to staying up far past when it was reasonable and accustomed to inventing the impossible in the meantime. But there had always been more to it than that. There had been another body beside him.

The moment he felt another presence in the room he failed in his efforts not to stiffen in his seat. Regardless of how he actually felt, which he wasn’t sure of either, there was still a level of alarm. A cloaked figure, gaze hidden in his drape of royal blue, staff in hand and frame leaned heavily against the table behind him. No image of that sort had ever boded well. Jayce never heard Him enter the room and he never heard Him leave. All he knew is that He appeared when Jayce felt his weakest and he wasn't sure exactly what that meant. Most nights, he didn't even bother to question whether or not it was real.

“You're back.”

“I always come back, Jayce. You know this.”

The tone was lighthearted. Placating, if not slightly condescending. Teasing. It was a conversation they had every night. If the voice was a figment of his imagination, Jayce wasn't sure why his brain had made it so raspy. That wasn't how he remembered it. He swallowed at the statement that was made. It was true; He never could seem to die and so He always came back, odds be damned. It was like He had tied himself to the universe and refused to let go even though it was as if He were a body being dragged through the storming waters of time. There was no telling if there would be anything left of Him at the end of it all. There was no telling if there was anything left of Him in that moment or if He was a ghost haunting Jayce in the wee hours of the morning when he couldn't sleep and the rumors from Zaun were entirely false. Regardless, whether He was Jayce’s imagination or real, He was still alive in a way.

And that was the thing. Jayce never could sleep anymore. It was the most horrific blessing.

“You really should get some rest. It is not healthy to be avoiding sleep as you do.”

“Wish it was that easy, V-”

He choked on the name. It was a self imposed rule that Jayce often found himself almost breaking. He never said His name anymore. Jayce wasn't even sure if He were real, and if He were, that wasn't who He was anymore. He wasn't that other body in the room all those years ago. Jayce refused to believe that. Because if this was who “V-” was now, it was entirely his fault.

“I never said it was easy. Just that it needs to be done.”

Jayce could've crumbled with the weight of those words. He gave up on whatever he was pretending to write and slammed his pen into the desk, shoulders lurching forward as he braced his forehead against his fingertips. The weight of his eyelids caused them to drift close. For a moment the only sound in the room was the core humming. Then, the tapping of a staff. He swallowed. It was fear that kept him from looking up for just a second, but he had never dealt well with the idea of fear stopping him. He gave in.

The sight of Him, back to Jayce and His hood lowered, gazing up at the Hexcore took Jayce’s breath away. Brown hair, richer and fuller now than it had been before, spilled over His shoulders. The bare parts of Him that Jayce could see pulsed with purple, an ebb and flow that was hard not to get caught up in. The sparse lighting of the room glinted off of the gold that joined His muscles whenever He shifted. Jayce had thought when they had first witnessed the Hexcore that that was the closest thing to ethereality he would ever witness. It seemed he was proven wrong.

“It is… quite odd.”

His half-assed, wholeheartedly-smug riddles and careful articulation hadn't changed a bit.

“What is?” Jayce was aware of the gruffness of his own voice, a rasp that had come about through the inability to rest and newfound reluctance to speak unless necessary. Mel had called it grief. He’d scoffed in her face, but the concept had stung. Who was he to grieve? Was it right to grieve someone who hadn’t entirely died?

“Seeing the internal become external.”

The moment He shifted as if He were going to turn, Jayce ducked his head again. “Clarify.” He began to massage his temples, hoping for some relief at the throbbing headache that was beginning to settle there.

“I feel it. It is all consuming, the feeling of the Hexcore. But…I would not change it.”

“No?”

He hummed, just as lighthearted as His first words of the night. “No. I think this was meant to be. It feels like… peace.”

“It wasn't meant to be. You know that.”

“And yet it happened anyway. What am I to do if not accept it? Your refusal to do so does not seem to be working so well for you.”

There was a creeping nausea in the base of Jayce’s throat. When he blinked images of Viktor, crumpled to the floor, bloody and on the verge of death, flashed across his memory. He remembered the overwhelming, suffocating fear that he had felt. The weight of Viktor in his arms, which devastatingly hadn't been much at all, as he ran. He remembered the moments of choking down regret and guilt as he waited to see if Viktor would survive it all. He questioned himself relentlessly. How had he not seen how bad Viktor had gotten? Where had he been when Viktor was withering away on his own, falling back into desperate measures Jayce never could've fathomed even a year ago? What else had he missed?

“You know that will do you no good.”

Jayce didn't respond. He folded his arms against the desk and laid his head down, eyes closed firmly. His breathing and the lullaby of the Hexcore would sing him to sleep and he would wake, like clockwork, in a few hours to the dull ache of his own guilt eating him alive. He wasn't sure how long it had been, but somewhere on the edges of his consciousness he felt a blanket settle over his shoulders and the murmuring of “Goodnight, Jayce.”

He didn't ask questions he didn't want the answer to, so each morning when he saw Mel, he didn't ask if she was actually the one who placed the blanket over his shoulder. If she was she never confessed. And so Jayce continued to wait, as he always did.

“What do you think the world will look like, now that we are what we are?”

He had taken to asking questions that often left Jayce shaking his head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I am certainly not who I used to be. Do you think you came out unscathed?”

Jayce sighed. Something had changed in the last few weeks– He was appearing even before Jayce was on the brink of dropping from exhaustion. This had led to more interrogative questioning and it was beginning to wear on him. “What does it even matter?” He shook his head and began scribbling his notes.

For a moment, he thought He’d scoffed. Jayce glanced up. He stood, arms crossed, staring out the large window at the night skyline. Jayce wasn’t sure what he saw out there, but it seemed to have captivated His attention. The scratching of Jayce’s pen stilled– a quirk Viktor had always scolded him for, the fact that he preferred pen vehemently over pencil– and he sighed. “No. No, I don’t think I came out unscathed.” His voice was quieter than he thought it would be.

He didn’t bother to respond to Jayce’s confession. He was waiting for a proper answer. “I don’t know what the world’s gonna look like. I don’t even know what you’re doing in Zaun now.”

“Oh, Jayce. Do not be so humble—it is clear you have no practice at it. You’re smart enough to draw some conclusions, at least.”

“I don’t know what I am anymore.” Jayce exhaled.

He began to move down the length of the room, seemingly pondering what Jayce had said. The tapping of his staff was a familiar sound that began to keep rhythm with the scratching of Jayce’s pen. “We are both going through a sort of metamorphosis, I suppose.”

“A metamorphosis?”

“A great change, yes. A metamorphosis is a much more poetic way to put it, don’t you think? It is necessary… to grow. That is the purpose of pain. To grow from it or to let it consume you. It will be fascinating to see which one you choose. I am very interested, these days, in your choices. Past and present.”

Jayce tapped the end of his pen against his chin, feigning concentration on the task in front of him. In reality, he was scouring his mind to seek out the inconsistencies in who he saw before him and Viktor. He wasn’t even sure if that would help– He was out there, Jayce was sure of that now, somewhere in Zaun spreading some belief that anyone could be saved from their ailments. Jayce figured that even if this were true, he was the exception. It was simply the visits that left Jayce reeling with questions of whether or not those moments were real. If He had somehow figured out a way to slip into the room and soothe away the overwhelm that kept Jayce awake and leave him to his rest or if Jayce had simply been so disturbed by the transformation that his own brain was summoning the only thing that would for sure ground him. The way Viktor always had before.

The latter made more sense, for sure. After all, what the hell did Viktor owe him after what had been done to him?

“You are drifting again.”

“My apologies.” Jayce’s tone was dry and sarcastic.

Jayce didn’t have to see Him looking to know He had turned. It was an electric shock sent up each and every one of his vertebrate when His gaze settled on him. Jayce shifted uncomfortably. The tapping of the staff grew closer, ominous and imminent in a way that contrasted so sharply with the way that Viktor’s approaches had been the promise of comfort before. The presence of Him leaned over Jayce’s shoulder to gaze at the work in front of him; it was hard to breathe with Him so close. There wasn’t warmth like Jayce had expected, as if he produced no body heat at all, and perhaps he didn’t. Jayce did his absolute best to keep his distance. He wouldn’t know what His body was like anymore. The familiar slant of his shoulders or the way his joints stuck out at sharp angles or the hollow of cheekbones and smattering of freckles and moles; it was all gone now.

A quiet hum rattled Jayce’s chest when it exited His body. “Your angles are off. I see that particular habit of yours has not changed.”

He reached over Jayce’s shoulder and settled a gray fingertip on the sheet of paper. “Start again from here.”

Jayce said nothing. He was staring at that hand like something holy had descended just to correct him on his math.

“You should try breathing. I have heard it is productive for the human body.”

And then he had moved away once again and Jayce gulped down oxygen with only the smallest amount of self-aware embarrassment. Did He even need to breathe? How much had the so-called transformation changed Him? What parts of Him were even human anymore?

The night moved forward without further conversation from either of them. Eventually, Jayce succumbed to the weight of sleep and slumped forward. At some point in that haze, he felt fingers in his hair in a way that was all too familiar. He must’ve mumbled, a name perhaps, something judging by the air that escaped him and the sharp desperation that pitched in his chest and then ebbed away. A thumb rubbed gently across the back of his neck and then all was easy and quiet.

“What would you be doing, if you did not stick so stubbornly to this lab and the remnants of the past? If you did not have your…obligations to the Council?” He was looking a little worse for wear that day, hip propped against a table as He leaned heavily on His staff. He kept His hood up; usually it was Jayce that avoided His attempts at eye contact, but that day He was hiding.

Jayce was reclined in his chair, head tilted back with his gaze on the ceiling as he tried not to snap another piece of chalk over the damn equation that had been evading him for hours. Another thing to haunt him, he guessed. “Wha’d’y mean?” He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“If you could be anywhere but here, where would you go?”

“Gods, I don’t know. Just that. Anywhere but here.”

“Would you join me?”

The stillness was suffocating. Jayce was afraid to move. Afraid to answer. He didn’t even know the answer he’d give. Would he go to Zaun to seek out Viktor—or what was left of him? Would he stick around to see what was to come at His side? What did that even look like, the area of Zaun that He had now turned into a sanctuary—allegedly? Jayce would never get used to the reverence that He was supposedly spoken about with. It was not something that sounded right coming from anyone’s mouth but his own.

When the silence stretched on incessantly, He sighed. And then there was nothing. When Jayce finally lifted his head, He was gone again.

The next time Jayce saw Him there was no conversation. He entered so silently that Jayce hadn’t even noticed; it wasn’t until an evening bird flew past the window that he looked up and saw Him. With His back turned once again Jayce was free to stare and so he did. He traced every line of His calcified musculature and the shimmering lines of His veins. He wondered what His touch felt like now; the smooth, angular lines of his fingers and the sharp drop of his waist underneath the fabric of that cursed cloak. Jayce felt the distinct urge to reverse the roles and soothe Him; he didn’t look peaceful anymore. His peace had felt unshakable once. But he imagined shedding Him of the weight of that cloak and tucking Him into the cold mattress that laid in Jayce’s neglected bedchambers—it wouldn’t be cold, not with Him there—and rediscovering just where their limbs fit again. They were both men of discovery or had been once. They could figure it out again, they really could.

And then He spoke.

“I do not think I will be coming back here again after tonight.”

Jayce startled so badly that he was unafraid as he looked up at Him. He was not looking back, His eyes were on that damned window. The alarm on Jayce’s face creased his brows so harshly that he could feel the tension there, the muscles strained. “What?” Jayce was only slightly aware of the irony of betrayal in his tone.

“I am so very tired, Jayce. Progress will not wait for you and I and so I must go with it.”

He sputtered and stood, jerking a hand through his hair. “What do you mean? Progress?”

When He turned and looked at Jayce it was the first time Jayce didn’t look away. The shifting current of his eyes was tainted with a sadness so fierce he flinched. In all the times Jayce had pictured His eyes, through the walking down hallways and the endless Council meetings and the evenings poring over endless engineering problems, he had never imagined the sadness that was there— so deeply set that it must’ve been in His bloodstream. The urge to soothe returned with a viciousness and Jayce was crossing the room before he could remember himself. His hand hovered; the proximity was enough, he could not bear to touch Him.

“It seems this is a habit that you will never break, Jayce. You will never move before the threat of losing me. Only after. And so you must lose me and I am so very intrigued to see just how you move afterwards.”

“Don’t do this.”

“I did not do this.” He raised his hand and Jayce couldn’t suppress the sharp inhale that escaped him, nor the way his eyes closed and his jaw clenched as His hand came to cup Jayce’s face. Hair brushed his cheek as He leaned in and, feather-light, left a kiss in the hollow of Jayce’s cheekbone. “You did this to me.”

And then he was gone and Jayce never stopped feeling fingertips and chapped lips on the neglected skin of his face.

And true to his word, as he always had been, Viktor never returned.

#jayvik #arcane #viktor #jayce talis #angst #no happy ending #queer longing #thats about it idk

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